A Response to Frank Rich & the Times

A Response to Frank Rich & the Times

Phil Brennan, NewsMax.com
Sunday, Sept. 21, 2003

New York Times art critic Frank Rich has come unhinged – again. Stung by complaints about his intemperate attacks on Mel Gibson and his film "The Passion," the liberal columnist has once again dipped his pen in malice and written a new screed calumniating Gibson and the film.

He opens his latest attack on Gibson for being ... gasp ... a "movie star."

"The guy is a movie star. Movie stars expect to get their own way,” he tells us. “They are surrounded by sycophants, many of them on the payroll. Should a discouraging word somehow prick the bubble of fabulousness in which they travel, even big-screen he-men can turn into crybabies."

Translation: Mel Gibson is a crybaby for reacting angrily to utterly unfounded criticism, largely from people like Rich who haven't seen the film.

And Rich all but sobs himself because Gibson won't let him see "The Passion."

He doesn't explain why Gibson should be so gracious to a columnist and other critics who have shown themselves to be utterly biased against the film before even seeing it.

Let’s take a moment and review what Rich is so upset about.

Rich says that Gibson claims "... he has based his movie on at least one revisionist source, a 19th-century stigmatic nun, Anne Catherine Emmerich, notable for her grotesque caricatures of Jews. To the extent that there can be any agreement about the facts of a story on which even the four Gospels don’t agree, his movie is destined to be inaccurate."

Not True.

Some of the nation's leading biblical experts have stated unequivocally that the film is totally faithful to the four Gospels. And, as NewsMax.com has pointed out, Gibson says that part of his inspiration for the film were the visions of Anne Catherine Emmerich as she reported them in "The Dolorous Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ according to the Meditations of Anne Catherine Emmerich" in which she recounted Christ's suffering in great and shocking detail.

The film itself, however, is based solidly on the four Gospels, as those evangelical Christian religious figures, all deeply rooted in the New Testament, who saw the film have said.

Rich reports, "In the New Yorker profile, Gibson says that 'modern secular Judaism wants to blame the Holocaust on the Catholic Church,’ a charge that Abraham Foxman, of the Anti-Defamation League, labels 'classic anti-Semitism. ' "

Has Foxman failed to notice the unrelenting and maliciously false attacks on Pope Pius XII?

Clearly, the Times is unabashedly anti-Catholic.

Gibson's motives are political. "Intentionally or not, the contentious rollout of 'The Passion' has resembled a political campaign, from its start on 'The O'Reilly Factor.' "

Rich then goes after Gibson's adherence to what he calls "a fringe church that disowns Vatican II and is not recognized by the Los Angeles Roman Catholic archdiocese."

Gibson's roads, he writes "do not lead to Rome so much as Washington.

"It was there that he screened a rough cut of the movie to conservative columnists likely to give it raves – as they did."

Obviously, Gibson is on the outs with Rome, Rich suggests, ignoring the fact that senior Vatican cardinals have enthusiastically endorsed the film, urging that everybody see it.

In the classic New York Times ploy of using anonymous sources to buttress its liberal prejudices, Rich claims he has "sought out some of those who have seen the movie itself, in the same cut praised by Gibson's clique this summer. They are united in believing, as one of them puts it, that "it's not a close call —the film clearly presents the Jews as the primary instigators of the crucifixion."

He won't tell you who told him that. You'll have to take Rich's word for it … for what it's worth.

Rich continues to perpetuate the falsehood that Gibson and the film are somehow anti-Semitic, although the overwhelming majority of those many people, including prominent Jews who have seen the film, vehemently deny the charge. Even Abraham Foxman once admitted as much.

And Jack Valenti, head of the Motion Picture Association and certainly no conservative, praised the film after seeing it this summer.

"I don't see what the controversy is all about," Valenti was quoted as saying. "This is a compelling piece of art. I just called Kirk Douglas and told him that this is the movie to beat."

Apparently, Rich does know what the controversy is about, though he hasn’t seen the film.

Editor's note:
James Hirsen’s "Tales from the Left Coast" - Find out the real story behind Mel Gibson`s "The Passion," and more!

Read more on this subject in related Hot Topics:
Media Bias
Mel Gibson Passion